You should have been an early adopter! Reports today are showing ALOT of bricked iPhones as they can’t be activated with Apples servers being down. Luckily, many of us upgraded yesterday and things are flawless! Feels like a brand new phone! (Side Note: I did not upgrade to 3G iPhone today)
Wall-E: [digging through trash, finds a bra and puts it on his head]
Woah..
In today’s episode of The Outboard Brain of a Geek we see everyone’s favorite geek configuring/establishing servers as well as choosing the content management system for several projects. Not to exciting, but without the back end, there can be no front end…
You ever get that feeling when doing something different that it’s confusing, exciting, and fun all at the same time? Thats how I feel when dealing with all of this affiliate marketing material piling up on my desk as I try to get a grip on all of it! :-)
Outside of working with affiliate marketing materials, I’ve chosen my content management systems across the board for all three of the projects. No descriptions of the projects until launch, but my justification behind each CMS below:
1. Wordpress / PHP / MySQL - Project number one which we’ll call “C” for tonight is being built completely from the ground up on Wordpress with some highly customized PHP/SQL plugins to support the add-on modules. (side note: some plug-ins *might* be made open source and made available for download)
The reason behind this choice is simply because of how robust and powerful Wordpress is straight out of the box and it’s a crazy time saver over building a custom solution as we discussed in yesterdays post. With so many modules already built as well as millions of users around the internet already using the software, support and customization are quite simple and user friendly.
2. Ruby on Rails - I’m an avid supporter of PHP as it’s really the first web programming language brought to my attention back in the day and I’ve stuck with it ever since. On the other hand though, over the past couple months, I’ve grown to love RoR as it’s extremely…well….rapid. I know, I know, it’s cliche, but I can build out simple applications very quickly and make adjustments to them very easily.
For this project, which we’ll call “NEF,” simplicity is pretty much key and there was no need for the overhead of an already made PHP content management system nor is it as fun to write in PHP so it’s like “every other site out there.” Consider this project a test bed to see if I’ll ever really use RoR in a production environment again outside of low traffic websites. (go ahead PHP lovers, flame away! haha)
3. Custom PHP / SQL - The last and final project for the six week challenge is what we will call the “HMB” project in which we are just slamming down a custom PHP /MySQL driven application. This website doesn’t require the functionality of Wordpress to allow for blog posting, comments, and all of that good stuff. It simply needs to allow for user submitted data and querying that data back out to all of the users on the website. Pretty simple right?
Until Next Time,
<? echo “Nicholas”; ?>
Mrs. Potato Head, Mrs. Potato Head, Mrs. Potato Head, Mrs… Hey, I can dream can’t I? -Mr. Potato Head.
In today’s lovely episode in The Outboard Brain of a Geek, we see everyone’s favorite geek start digging into the code and prepping for the launch of several projects. Will he succeed or will he fail? Only God knows…
So it’s been a long day and most of it was honestly spent dealing with some interesting comments on my employers website as well as drilling down the CSS for our latest and greatest in house project…but there is always enough time in the day to work on a more than one project! :-)
Yesterday I briefly touched on the idea of taking the steps to be successful, but it wasn’t really helpful nor informative, just more of a pointless post (in my opinion) outside of the listed steps for success. Taking a step beyond that and actually writing something that might be of some help to you, here are a few tips I’ve learned over the years…
Identify an Opportunity
Should you launch a product if the market is already over saturated with millions of other similar ideas? Could this possibly lead to failure of the project and a waste of your time and money? A better question is whether or not you are willing to place all of your faith into this project?
Anything that you build and want to make into something that is successful needs to be unique and something that people are going to want to use and remember. Take a look around the internet and check out all of the millions of Digg, MySpace (even though MySpace is becoming a FaceBook rip-off), and other startup clones that there are around the net. Are they successful? Would you have built something similiar? Both answers are a resounding “No!”
Brain Dump Like No Other
If you don’t know what brain dumping is, you need to step back, get away from the computer, and slap yourself across the face. Not really, but I enjoy being a dick from time to time…
Brain dumping in all seriousness though is simply taking every possible thing under the sun that is up there in your mind and writing it down so you simply don’t forget it and it helps you organize your thoughts better.
If you’ve got the worlds next greatest idea in your head while driving down the road, chances are that you are going to forget about it if you don’t write it down at the next stop light. Simple things like this can help you really turn a good idea into a great idea as you never know when that simple improvement you thought of five days ago is the feature that saves your project from the deadpool.
Keep It Simple Stupid (K.I.S.S)
For the love of god, don’t over work yourself by trying to create to much in to short of an amount of time. I’m highly guilty of this as I have millions of notebooks thrown all over the house each filled with a million different ideas about a million different things. Trying to build out each idea, each application, each module, etc is just not possible.
Keep the design, interface, plan, staff, and anything else you can simple for the initial concept/beta launch of a project. You simply want to get that bad boy out to the market and see how people connect with it to see if it’s worth moving forward with or to see what your users truly want to see out of your project.
Utilize Tools & Frameworks
DO NOT BUILD FROM SCRATCH IF YOU DON’T HAVE TO!!!! Building a content mangement system from scratch is perfect in some cases as you truly need to understand how things work and how to improve upon them, but in 9/10 cases, you can use something already made. Reinventing the wheel just isn’t a necessary as it’s a waste of time, money, and effort.
Last but not least, Shake and Bake!
Don’t be afraid of launching a project at the last minute simply because you are afraid it’s going to fail. Throw that bad boy into the oven and let it cook. People are either going to eat it up or spit it out, but you’ll never know if you don’t try.
Conclusion….
I know, I know, it’s just a bunch of rambling, but hey, it could help somebody out there doing the exact same thing I’m doing or having gone through the same issues. If not, oh well, it’s all pretty fun for me… To end the night, check out the following links:
15 Tips For Becoming As Patient as Job
Stewie Griffin Responds to 2 Girls 1 Cup
10 Ways To Optimize A Old Post
The State of the Web - Summer 2008
Until Next Time,
<? echo “Nicholas”; ?>
“The most dangerous moment comes with victory” -Napoleon Bonaparte
So before you attack, whether a person or an objective, you will need a plan of how to accomplish the said task as well as the motivation to make it happen. You have to remind yourself that failure simply isn’t an option, but instead use your self negativity to push yourself even harder.
So what would your plan of attack be for launching a new website or startup? You’ve got a five step process to make a successful product, but how you deal with each one is up to you as an individual. I’m just here to give you information….
5 Steps To Success:
1. Planning (Purpose? Goals? Content? Audience? Revenue?)
2. Design (Self Design? Hired Designer?)
3. Development (Server? Languages? Contractor?)
4. Testing & Marketing (Browser Testing, Functionality, etc)
5. Maintenance (Who will maintain? Who will provide content?)
Sometimes it’s best not to over think something and just jump into it - sitting idle is wasting time and wasting money. Don’t sit on an idea until it’s where you feel it’s perfect, but instead build it out and build on top of a solid foundation.
Without further blabbering and rambling from this geek, check out the following links:
6 Phases of the Web Site Design / Development Process
CSS Layout Cheats
Improving Code Readability with CSS
Powerful CSS Techniques For Effective Coding
70 Coding Ideas + 80 Design Tips
But for those following my little adventure (my six week challenge), what have I accomplished in the first day to help lead my way into success or failure? Let’s take a look….
Good or bad amount of work done? Not quite sure as it’s not quite as much as I’d hoped to get done, but tomorrow is a new day where I can push forward with some actual work and step away from the planning phase.
For tonight, I’m off to watch a couple movies (Definitely Maybe & The Ruins), eat some dinner, and then start working on setting up a new LAMP server with the new 2008.0 Gentoo Release.
Until Next Time,
<? echo “Nicholas”; ?>
If you want a better life, then you’ve got to become a better person.
Back a couple years ago when waking up in the morning meant going to work for the Department of Defense, never did a day go by when I truly didn’t want to go to work. Hell, I remember days off where I just wished I could spend more time in the office because I enjoyed it so much. Every day was a new adventure with a new set of challenges, new people, and always something more interesting going on than the day before.
Now, fast forward to the current day and every day before having to go head to work, the excitement has all but fizzled away. It’s no longer fun, just tedious, and I want/deserve more. The lack of innovation accepted in the industry, crazy censorship practices, 3 hours a day of driving, and more can quickly make you lose that drive to push for more. It’s simply working for works sake so that a pay check can show up in the bank account every two weeks.
We only live through life one time, and don’t we deserve to enjoy every day here on this planet and do something you love to do?
With that said, there is something you may or may not know about me and that’s a simple fact that I truly love a good competition. Not being the best of the best at something can truly just eat away at me and will surely motivate me to push harder and apply more dedication to make things happen.
Well today my friends is “Zero Day,” and what that means is that it’s the day before the start of a self challenge for six weeks. The intention isn’t to walk away from my current full time job at the end of the six weeks, but it’s to have a excellent foundation to begin planning to leave my full time job sometime around the end of the year or beginning of next year.
The goals? 1 Company, 3 Projects, 6 Weeks, $1,000 new monthly revenue. Simple Enough?
The next several weeks should be extremely fun and should be filled with many informative posts, several marketing blitzes, advertising campaigns, and possibly even some video posts. Are you excited? (more than likely not - haha) I sure am!
Until Next Time,
-Nicholas
***********
Side Note: 25% of all revenue made during the following six weeks will be donated to the Child’s Play Charity and we will continue to donate money each month to a wide variety of charities that benefit children.
